Bush, Bush everywhere…
This summer—in between weekly encounters on radio and in print exchanges with those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome—I tried to get away, by climbing as many peaks in the Kaiser wilderness as possible, and marveled over the relative emptiness of that part of the central Sierra.
Recently I went up on the so-called Kaiser Loop, a 15-mile round-about hike to Kaiser Peak (about 10,300 feet). Lo and behold!—there were three hikers on the summit in that rarified atmosphere. And after exchanging pleasantries about the beauties of the empty wilderness, one well spoken and nice person remarked about the exploitation of the forests (yet not a house, road, or human to be seen), and the greed of developers (the nearest road hasn’t been improved since the 1940s).
Then Presto!—out came Katrina, Iraq, Bush this, Bush that. The clear air, the panoramic vista, the Sierra junipers—none of that could stop the onset of this paroxysm, this fit of madness. I hiked down, unsure whether I should have called the paramedics to copter him to Fresno.
So what is a Neocon?
Heard that up at 10,000 feet as well. The slur seems equivalent to the charge of being a child-molester. Apparently to be called a “new conservative” no longer refers to a way of thinking first identified with a group of influential New-York leftists who tired of their own doctrinaire liberalism in the late 1960s and 1970s, and turned on the Great Society. Nor in matters of foreign policy does it mean that these once liberal / now conservative skeptics were suspicious of both the realpolitik of supporting tyrants and the liberal appeasement of terrorists that amounted to the same thing through inaction.
Instead, to be frank—and I speak as one who supported the idea of removing Saddam and staying on to foster constitutional government there—it is now a thinly-veiled slur against supposedly sneaky, scheming Jewish intellectuals who likewise supposedly got us into a surrogate war for Israel. And this conspiracy theory persists despite the fact that former realists like Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, and Rumsfeld are neither Jewish nor easily hoodwinked—and ultimately made the final decision to go to war after receiving overwhelming authorization from the US Congress, including a majority of Democrats and stirring saber-rattling speeches and warnings about WMD from the likes of Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry.
I have disagreements with neo-cons on things like open borders, but on the Middle East ultimately I think they will be proven correct: that we must find a way to distance ourselves from dictators and yet reply militarily to those who harbor terrorists. In the long term, the forces of globalization and modernism are far more lethal to jihadism than 7th century Islam is to us, but in the dangerous short-term, Bush-I realism and Clintonian cruise-missiles will only lead to another 9/11.
Whom to Trust?
Not The New Republic that printed false accusations from a once anonymous, now unmasked Pvt. Beauchamp, his falsehoods “checked” at the magazine apparently by his newly-wedded wife. Not Newsweek’s “Periscope” that printed falsehoods about flushed Korans. Not Reuters or AP whose wirephotos can be assumed to be either photoshopped or simply captioned with untruths. Not CBS news (‘fake, but accurate’)—not CNN’s president who stepped down after those Davos slurs. I say this only out of amazement at the self-righteousness of all these outlets that give moral lectures about integrity and “truth” to the rest of us.
I Guess We Forgot the Laws of the Past
There used to be certain laws about mortgages, wisdom slowly acquired through past boom and bust cycles of American history. You got a fixed, usually 30-year mortgage. You paid 20% down. And you bought a house whose debt payments did not eat up more than 30-40% of your monthly income.
Tales of wild real estate riches and speculative profits, even if true, meant little, since a home was more than just an investment. Somehow all that was forgotten with no or little down payment loans, adjustable-rate or interest only schedules, and excess purchased square footage.
Apparently the idea was either to appreciate yourself into 2nd and 3rd mortgage equity, or to expect interest rates magically to go down and thus lower payments, or to buy and sell/buy and sell yourself into a mansion. So the house of straw is now tragically collapsing, and the old wisdom of the past being relearned.
Ditto the Chinese serial fiascos. In the 19th century, the muckrakers, crusaders, and populists all lectured us that most industrialists were good, but a small minority that wasn’t could do great damage through the mass sale of toxic products. Thus arose the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies and the consumer movement.
But then the new wisdom ignored that and we were told that out-sourcing was a win/win situation, as cheap goods flooded into the US, keeping inflation low, expanding our purchasing power, freeing us up from the drudgery of rote labor, while moderating the Chinese.
Few asked whether there were comparable regulatory institutions in China. And there weren’t. And now we have everything from toxic pet food to tainted toys—exactly in the manner of our own spoiled canned meat and drug-laced soft-drinks of generations past. Again we forget our ancestors’ past wisdom about human nature.
Ditto again open borders. Our illiberal ancestors worried about letting in too many groups in too quickly a time under less than legal auspices, lest the heralded melting pot stagnate and solidify.
We in our infinite wisdom laughed at all that as protectionist, illiberal, nativist, even racist. And so like the laxity of the Chinese manufacturing sector, for 30 years the U.S. functioned without the rule of law. Now the result is that Los Angeles is the second largest city of Mexican nationals in the world, the legal system has become a mockery, and the bankrupt idea of a salad bowl of unmixed and competing tribes has replaced the melting pot. Apartheid communities in the United States—try visiting Parlier or Orange Cove, California— are somehow models of diversity, not to be lamented for their poverty, racial and linguistic uniformity, and entitlement-dependent and often exploited illegal aliens.
How odd that liberalism is giving us a model right out of the Old Confederacy or South Africa, a nation in the American Southwest of two different societies. The old truism holds true: each time a Mexican national enters the US legally, knows English, and has graduated from high school, an employer loses a potential bargain hire and the Chicano Studies industry an exploited victim in need of its crusading zeal.
So once more we are turning back to the mundane: nations must have borders; a citizenry should have a single uniform official language; assimilation and integration must be encouraged, and separatism and tribalism shunned.
The one common thread is again short-term bounty and convenience at the expense of long-term disaster. An odd thought: I wish I could say that had we more farmers in this society, who are born, live, and die in the same place, and depend on what works over decades rather than what seems to work over a few years, we wouldn’t be in such dilemmas.
I say I wish because agriculture for years depended on illegal immigration, failing to realize that scarce labor would make prices rise and mechanization quicken–and that the doom of farmers was always overproduction and surfeit never shortages of product.
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25 Comments
1. Kelly Overmyer:I am not of the camp that likes to compare our United States to that of the Roman empire. However I supose that certain paralles could be drawn between the fall of Rome and the seemingly downward spiral certian folks are determined to push us into. Mass immigration with out haveing to learn even basic communication skills in our brand of english, why we’ll just print everything in the language you most comfortable with. Farming our of all of our “unwanted” jobs to third and second worl countries so we can got o the big box mart and get them cheaper. The devaluation of life, not just abortion but there is a great many people who place animal welfare above that of “us”. The list goes on and on, unfortunatley Iv’e come to the conclusion that what we need is another knock down drag out fight in the vein of the the two great wars in order to wake people up.
Aug 22, 2007 - 6:26 am 2. Ivanhoe:“The one common thread is again short-term bounty and convenience at the expense of long-term disaster. An odd thought: I wish I could say that had we more farmers in this society, who are born, live, and die in the same place, and depend on what works over decades rather than what seems to work over a few years, we wouldn’t be in such dilemmas.”
With the above paragraph, I sensed that Dr. Hanson was about to launch into a curmudgeonly rant about what we have lost in this country due to the century long decline of farmers in the nation, and caught himself, having covered this phenomenon in his books on agriculture. Too bad. A curmudgeonly rant is in order.
Aug 22, 2007 - 8:23 am 3. GGA - Dublin, Ohio:There is nothing odd about Dr. Hanson’s train of thought at all. What is “odd” and perhaps catastrophically so, is the mindset that has incrementally infected this country from top to bottom for 40 years, the notion that we can get, and deserve to get, “something for nothing”. As “Something for Nothing” continues to be the rallying cry of the nation, evidenced by the current crop of presidential candidates, (with the possible exception of Ron Paul and other ”fringe” candidates) pandering relentlessly to the entitlement mindset, expect little to change.
As a 50-something hobby farmer, son and grandson of farmers, there is hardly a week goes by that I don’t thank those now deceased gentlemen for disabusing me early on about what I “deserved” as opposed to what I earned. And there was nothing special about my upbringing; the idea of merit versus entitlement was so commonplace in the rural Iowa of my youth, as to be an unquestioned truth, like cold in winter.
Dr. Hanson -
Thank you (again) for your continuing output of outstanding columns and posts. Your most recent writings are (as usual) crisp, insightful, and educational. They have been a real joy to read. I look forward each week to learning from you.
For what it is worth, I want you to know that you have created in me an interest to learn more about military history, particularly American military history. (I recently finished reading “1776″ by David McCollough - which was fantastic.) I am especially interested in doing so, given your (correct and insightful) observations in your recent City Journal article that the study of military history is full of important lessons and is viewed with contempt by the university establishment!
Do you have any recommendations for quality history books concerning American military history? Any words on this subject will be greatly appreciated.
Please keep up your great work.
Best regards,
Aug 22, 2007 - 11:23 am 4. linda:GGA - Dublin, Ohio
I think I’m in love!
I always thought I knew what a neo-con was and it was liberal on domestic policy and hawkish on foreign. During the Bush administration everyone is a neo-con, even Cheney and Rumsfeld who I’ve watched for years and years, well before the neo’s entered the party.
Aug 22, 2007 - 8:34 pm 5. Anonymous:Suddenly everyone is a dreaded neo-con and now it’s just become an anti-Jewish slur.
You’re the the first big time guy who ever said it in print that I know of. For joy! I’ve not lost the thread of history and it’s “just a bunch of nuts spoiling the town”.
Uh, this is pure revisionism. Our borders were open for the first hundred and fifty years of our history, you know, the same hundred and fifty years during which we transformed ourselves from an agricultural backwater into the largest industrial power in the history of history. The very last thing our illiberal ancestors were concerned with was the viability of the American melting pot. Like our drug laws, our original immigration laws were Jim Crow laws produced at the height of the Jim Crow era for racialist reasons that can be found articulated in many places, including the Congressional Record. And we must imagine that a life of being born, living and dying on the farm mustn’t have been as wonderful as Dr. Hanson opines here if we consider why so many of them suffered unspeakable misery to leave the farm for sweatshops in the city generation after generation after generation. I know there isn’t a day that goes by that my grandfather, the tenth child of a half-blood Cherokee Alabama sharecropper, doesn’t thank God on his knees that the Second Great War got him the hell off the farm.
yours/
Aug 22, 2007 - 8:47 pm 6. anonymousoregon:peter.
I identify with how you felt on top of that mountain and talking with the other hikers about politics.
I don’t like how things are going in Iraq. Nobody does. However the other side in this debate don’t offer a viable alternative. Instead the debates go from evil Bush in Iraq to other agendas about health care, global warming, cultural sensitivity etc. without stopping to address real solutions to our current predicament.
The left is failing miserably. Bush is at his nadir, intuitively there should be a strong base of support united against the status quo. However instead the left is a patchwork of dissatisfied Americans competing with special interests and extremists. This is bad for everybody.
Aug 22, 2007 - 8:55 pm 7. Evan:The Kaiser loop area is beautiful. Have camped at Nellie lake many a time. Last time I was up there I met a man who claimed to have sat and listened to the wolves howling the night before. It does not surprise me that you stumbled upon someone a bit daft. I was a history major at CSUF when you were a prof there, never took one of your classes, pity that.
Aug 22, 2007 - 9:04 pm 8. RKV:I worked in Japan for six years and met many a person suffering from BDS. Were you aware that Bush and the CIA are trying to destroy the government of the Central African Republic? Got that info from a limey who heard it from a clown she met in Nagoya. A real clown in red nose and colored suit. Her first words upon meeting me at a party were, “America is s**t, isn’t it.” She was drunk, but booze is a window to the soul.
“There used to be certain laws about mortgages” - there also used to be laws against usury (interest). Good rules of thumb and common sense aren’t exactly the same as US Code or state law, Victor. You know better than that.
And by the way, scarce labor leads to mechanization, not higher prices. Examine tomatoes for a specific case. I come from Coalinga so I know about those things - its what my girlfriend in high school did for summer work. Mechanically picked tomatoes cost less in real terms now than when they were picked by hand.
And as for all the farmers who knowingly hire illegals (and that’s about all of them since they don’t really bother to check their green cards), to hell with them. Sun Maid members like my deceased father-in-law whined about what’s happening to the country, then proceeded to dump the medical and other costs of their workers on the rest of us. And yeah he lived in the same place (or within 15 miles of Del Rey) for all his life and he still broke the laws knowingly - as do most of the other farmers. Start putting the employers in jail and then things will change. The politicians won’t do that because they’ll lose campaign contributions, Victor.
Drop me an email Victor and I’ll give you an earful and name names. Let’s try a couple on for size, my cousin by marriage’s name is Jim Mills. If your know your California politics you should know that name. My mom went to school with the Coelhos from Riverdale and our family lawyer worked for the Harris family too.
Aug 22, 2007 - 9:44 pm 9. Joan of Argghh!:I remember reading a Time-Life volume set about the first 50 years of the 20th Century, way back when I was maybe 12 years old.
“Those little monthly payments,” on everything from furniture to radios to food items was held forth as the beginning of the great Crash of the Stock Market. The over-extension of credit was my first financial lesson, never to be forgotten.
Our media used to know useful things. Not sure what the kids are actually learning from it today.
Aug 23, 2007 - 4:01 am 10. Andrew Oliver:As a farmer I accept and then take issue with the last paragraph.
Aug 23, 2007 - 4:15 am 11. phil:The stalwart of this country was once the community. Those who lived in that community kept it safe and secure, and its base was agriculture. We who still farm have watched this security lapse into a CNN communtiy with no boundaries (neither geographical nor moral). Hard work and concrete results give us no time for the frivolous past time of multiculturalism and political correctness.
AND, there are still many of us who respect the law of the land which states that the employment of an Illegal Alien will be punishable by fines. The Simpson/Manzoli law is still under effect and my wife, my partner, my bookkeeper, my moral compasss reminds me of this fact everytime I moan over the fact that young men in our area have no concept of work or even commitment to show up for work and the only people who do are my age (56) or older. When you speak of agriculture and immigrants you speak of the agri-corporations such as Tyson or the few large “truck” farms that need labor to pick their crops. The rest of us do our on work and wonder when the anarchy of our cities’ society will come break down our doors.
Excellent post!
Aug 23, 2007 - 5:25 am 12. Mark L:I believe you are a Kipling fan. If so, you might review his poem “God of the Copybook Headings.” It says pretty much the same thing that you do today. It was written around 100 years ago.
Aug 23, 2007 - 5:49 am 13. Cornhead:Bush Derangement Syndrome at 10,000 feet. No surprise. The attackers probably thought you were like-minded: a California academic who is an outdoorsmen. You are contrary to 99% of your cohorts.
I’ve come to believe that there are some on the left that have become unhinged over the Iraq War. The division is almost as deep - but not as violent at home - as Vietnam.
No draft so students aren’t up in arms, but the media really feeds it. And the DailyKos types lap it up and conclude that Bush lied and should be impeached; at best. Some are probably even serious about “war crimes” trials.
As best I can figure, they completely don’t understand the nature of the enemy even after 9/11, all the suicide bombings and the attack by the Islamist doctors in Scotland. (But don’t bother them with the facts!) They really and truly believe that the Islamists are not a threat to the United States. Even though they have beheaded and killed Americans in other ways, their view it is all a Bush “scare” tactic to deprive them of their civil rights.
Or maybe Bush just went to war to avenge for his father or for the oil industry.
What is so, so shocking is their irrationality, emotionalism and lack of understanding of the seventh century Islamists. Failing to know history and facts also adds to it.
And then throw in the aging children of ‘68 (e.g. John Kerrey, Bill Moyers) and it is quite the combination.
The Surge in Iraq being run by Gen. Petraeus is on par in importance to the Republic’s future as D Day or Sherman’s March to the Sea. Thank God for men like him and Rhodes Scholar Lt. Col John Nagl from Omaha. With people of this quality, we can win if they are not forced to quit.
Aug 23, 2007 - 8:33 am 14. Paul M:Excellent, as usual.
Aug 23, 2007 - 8:56 am 15. Allen:“I wish I could say that had we more farmers in this society…” — but then, agribusinessmen aren’t farmers in the sense you mean, are they?!
Aug 23, 2007 - 10:31 am 16. Chris Green:The stunted pace of mechanization in farming is one of the most terrible consequences of mass, unchecked immigration. Rome, similarly, depended on slave labor on its farms and the result was little or no agriculteral innovation or improvement for centuries.
Nobody should be sweating 10 hours a day in the hot sun for minimum wage (or even $10/hour), poverty stricken and with no hope of improving their life because they have no skills and probably don’t even speak English.
Machines should be harvesting our fruit, not people. However, as long as immigration control is a joke, labor will be so cheap that the technology to harvest fruit and vegitables mechanically will never be realized.
Aug 23, 2007 - 11:33 am 17. Californio:Very sad/funny about the hikers. Would they voluntarily leave California right now - to strike a blow against the pervasive encroachment of Man? Or is it for the “other” to change their lifestyle for the good of all?
And why would an Aztlan-addled companero advocate a return to the “good” old days? Ok for me. But something tells me they will not embrace their “place” - i.e. menial physical labor, the entire time assiduously avoiding making eye contact with the Patron - oh, hello, that would be …Me. (Don’t blame me - blame God for giving the land to the King of Spain and then to my family - we all have to fulfill our role here on earth, don’t we?) Pobrecitos. My favorite part of the restoration will be jack-hammering up the 10 freeway in Los Angeles, just before it ends at highway 101 at the beach in Santa Monica - My grandmother’s family ranch will be restored.
Have a nice day Mr. Hanson
Aug 23, 2007 - 1:18 pm 18. QwkDrw:You say, ” . . . nations must have borders; a citizenry should have a single uniform official language; assimilation and integration must be encouraged, and separatism and tribalism shunned.”
Agreement with that statement is easy. However, If you would add “controlled borders” and “English language”, you would have my enthusiasm.
Aug 23, 2007 - 1:25 pm 19. Dougger:Hmmmm.
Aug 23, 2007 - 6:35 pm 20. blogengeezer:Yup…
Can’t feel sorry for the real estate gamblers. Don’t want to encourage that kind of behavior with bailouts either.
As you alluded, we already know how to fix these problems.
Just gotta do it.
Let the gamblers lose.
Control the border.
Punish employers of illegals, stop providing them public assistance; without jobs, they will self-deport.
Thank you Victor for bringing back memories from my younger years. Farming communities needed lots of work during harvest. I and all the other kids worked very willingly at every opportunity. We started to learn that very young as ‘Chicken Chasers’. Our families had no extra money to just give us. We Picked apples in the fall. Pulled ‘tassles’ from highbrid corn in the summer. I plowed more dirt and mowed, baled, and hauled more hay than I can even remember. Weeds were mowed during the growing season. The cultivator had to be installed during the bean growing period. Then the sickle bar had to be reinstalled. Oh did I mention the planting that started the entire cycle. When the snow started to fall, we shoveled and plowed it for money. School was a break for us. Kids in our community never had the time to do much destruction. The local police cruiser would drive down our road while we walked along with our 22 caliber rifles, stop and motion us over to the door. We liked to look inside the ‘cruiser’ and listen to the radio ’squak’ while the Sheriff warned us not to shoot the insulators off the power and telephone poles. We said we would not do that, they drove on and we finished our critter huntin’. Great times in a country that is long gone. Some time I will tell you about ‘The Gandy Dancers’ http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/
Aug 23, 2007 - 9:37 pm 21. J David Green:Memo to Dr. Hanson: free markets work. Americans are demanding quality from Chinese manufacturers and will vote with their dollars. The Chinese will either reform or lose market share.
In contrast, massive government bureaucracies (aka, the alphabet soup of agencies) promise utopia, add little value, cost far too much, expand into infinity, and multiply without end.
Aug 24, 2007 - 6:00 am 22. johnny go:The great tide of post-WWII liberalism has certainly done its damage and the culture war is most definitely on to reclaim what has been so terribly weakened.
My question to you, Mr. Victor, is: have we lost California?
and another: So, in the end, did democracy begin in Greece because of the topography or not, or to what degree?
Hope to meet you someday–at 10,000 feet or even at sea-level. Your quiet virtues are an inspiration.
Aug 24, 2007 - 8:44 am 23. gs:I provisionally accept the following sentence, from the abstract of a Boston Fed discussion paper about mortgages, at face value:
The entire paper is available at the link.
Excesses should be corrected and their recurrence should be disincentivized. The scalawags should be forced out of the mortgage business, no matter how ivied their pedigrees or white their shoes. But I doubt that every financial innovation deviating from the traditional mortgage is illegitimate.
Aug 24, 2007 - 12:43 pm 24. David:My mother grew up on a ranch at the foot of the Diablos in the Great Valley. A hard, Depression era life. Long hours of work, little tangible compensation except subsistence, a sense of inferiority to the “town” people. College was out of the question…she went to work in town immediately after high school to earn cash for the family. My grandfather had few Jeffersonian moments of leaning on his hoe to reflect on much else besides bills, the weather, his wild-ass crop dusting, rodeo riding, motorcycle racing sons.
My parents were Greatest Generation people in many respects. Dad went ashore in the second wave at Normandy; mom dreaded the Western Union man. They were independent minded, careful not to waste, appreciative of now assumed rewards…in short, they had traditional “character”.
My mom would not have extolled rural life…too many pre-dawn, January mornings out in the fields, to many missed opportunities, to few dreams fulfilled. Yet, she and my father had the kind of character that many here wish was more common today– more necessary for keeping our nation and culture “on course”.
To get that character they had to give up claims and expectations for a more material life. And that, I believe, is in part what Dr. Hanson is talking about. Few people do so willingly….not mall-rat teens, young urban professionals, trendy progressives, hip blue staters, or even Republican agribusinessmen.
Aug 24, 2007 - 2:28 pm 25. Richard Gregg:To VDH, read this article via Hoover’s 8-22 Daily Report on the internet. One of your better summations of the current situation, minus your usual snippets toward the left wing, which seem to be always simmering beneath your character (and surfacing constantly). Nice to see you admit that no one is perfect (but I already knew that!). Just like an alcoholic, the first step on the road to reform is admitting your faults…then trying to improve. Keep going..!
Aug 27, 2007 - 10:09 pm